(Auszug)
Anstatt den fruchtlosen Versuch zu betreiben, hier konziliante Diskussionen oder Analysen auszubreiten - gegen die jeder MdB längst eine Hornhaut entwickelt hat, dass sie von ihm abperlen, ohne dass er sie überhaupt registriert - wird es Zeit, laut und deutlich zu werden: ihnen ins Gesicht zu sagen / zu schreiben, welche Dreistigkeiten sie sich gegenüber ihren Wahlbürgern erlauben - allerdings, ohne dabei viele Worte zu verschwenden: die Mitarbeiter in den MdB-Bueros werden schließlich dafür bezahlt, dass sie längere Einlassungen (von denen sie täglich hunderte von diversen Querulanten erhalten) in den Textshredder entsorgen, anstatt ihren Arbeitgeber / MdB damit zu behelligen.
Stattdessen halte ich klare und knappe Statements für angezeigt (auch wenn sie schwieriger zu entwickeln sind / sehr viel mehr Mühe kosten, als ein langer Sermon, den anschließend keiner der Adressaten liest)
Um ein (sicher verbesserungsfähiges) Beispiel zu geben:
"Keine Sklavenhaltung nach den Rezepten von Clement, Schroeder und Hartz !
Wir fordern Gerechtigkeit statt Steuergeschenke für Konzerne und Spitzenverdiener, statt 5-stelliger Schatteneinkommen der Minister. (Beispiel: Schroeder & Eichel stecken neben ihrem Minister-/Kanzlergehalt auf Staatskosten Zehntausende Euro ein
http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/pdf.phtml?myP=040108b_schatteneinkommen.pdf
Soziale Rechte statt Selbstbedienung der Elite.
Wer die Opfer seiner eigenen Unfähigkeit eine Politik für die Menschen zu gestalten, prügelt anstatt ihre Existenzen zu sichern, hat damit den Respekt der Bürger verspielt. Er verdient behandelt zu werden, wie jemand, der auf Kosten anderer um Posten schachert und sich die eigenen Taschen (und die seiner reichen Freunde) vollstopft, während er seine Wähler in die moderne Sklavenhaltung der Konzerne verkauft.
Bitte erklären Sie uns, was daran gerecht ist, dass ein lohnabhängiger Bürger den sechsfachen Teil seines Einkommens für die Krankenversicherung aufbringen muss, als Minister Eichel oder Kanzler Schroeder bzw. das fünfzigfache von dem eines Josef Ackermann.
Bitte erklären Sie uns, warum Sie es für richtig halten, Abgeordneten, Ministern, Großverdiener und Managern großzügige Steuererleichterungen (durch Senkung des Spitzensteuersatzes) und Steueramnestien zu gewähren, während sie gleichzeitig Arbeitslosen das letzte Hemd ausziehen / ihre Existenzen ruinieren.
Bitte teilen Sie uns mit, ob Sie sich auch weiterhin vorrangig um das Wohlergehen der Gutbetuchten, der Konzernbosse und Grossaktionäre kümmern werden, die Sie zu ihren Parties oder auf Ihre Yachten einladen, vielleicht Direktorenposten oder andere Annehmlichkeiten nach Ablauf Ihrer Amtszeit in Aussicht stellen, oder ob Sie bereit sind, sich ernsthaft um das Gemeinwesen zu bemühen, das durch Ihre bisherige neoliberale Politik ruiniert wird (Maggie Thatcher lässt grüßen), und stattdessen den Bürger, der mit einem kleineren Einkommen wirtschaften muss, als Sie, ins Zentrum Ihrer Aufmerksamkeit zu stellen."
Gerhard Wendebourg
Starmail - 30. Jun, 23:38
by Vincent Jauvert
Le Nouvel Observateur Hebdomadaire
Week of 24 June 2004
Now it's obvious to everyone: Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the famous arsenal brandished by George Bush and Tony Blair to justify the Iraq invasion, were a fiction. What is less well known is why the CIA went so far astray and what the White House' exact role was in this tremendous mystification. Vincent Jauvert has taken apart the mechanism of a manipulation whose consequences prove to be more deadly every day.
He appeared in Bangkok one day in December 2001. The man said he was an Iraqi construction engineer. He had just fled Saddam Hussein's regime and had things to reveal. In Iraq, he had built twenty factories for the production of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons - all underground. He could show the exact locations on a map. He has proof of this frightening arsenal: copies of contracts, plans... The CIA interrogates him several times in Thailand. Then it installs him in a little Virginia town with his whole family. For the intelligence agency, the engineer has become a precious defector - "the most important of all", the "New York Times" will write just before the war. In his famous speech at the UN in September 2002, George Bush cites the engineer's name: Adnan Saeed al-Haideri. According to the President of the United States, this man is the most convincing witness to the Iraqi threat. Six months later, after the fall of Baghdad, CIA officers will go to the sites the engineer has designated. The American spies will search, will dig up the earth, will excavate all over. They won't, however, find anything: no weapons of mass destruction, no laboratory, no evidence of a program start-up. Nothing. Adnan Saeed lied.
He wasn't the only one. According to an official American report revealed recently by the "Los Angeles Times", almost all the Iraqi defectors were fabulists; and on May 16, Colin Powell made this disturbing confession: some of the proofs he presented to the UN were "false" because the "sources" had lied.
Oh those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! All of America, or almost, believed in them. They "justified" the war. They didn't exist. What happened? Why did the CIA go so far astray? How and by whom were Americans - whether simple citizens or senators - brainwashed? What was the White House role in this affair?
In recent months, congressmen have launched inquiries. Spies have begun to talk. Former Bush administration officials have revealed pre-war behind the scenes activity. "Le Nouvel Observateur" has questioned several of these witnesses. Thanks to them, a year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, we may attempt to reconstitute the causes of this unbelievable collective hallucination and to shed some light on the mechanisms of an unprecedented State manipulation.
Kenneth Pollack is the first witness. In his elegant forties, he was in the forefront during the months preceding the invasion. In 2002, this former CIA man wrote a book subtitled "Why We Must Invade Iraq". Kenneth Pollack, however, is neither an extremist nor a Republican, but a staunch Democrat. He advised Bill Clinton on the Gulf dossier at the White House. Then, in the fall of 2002, he puts himself at the Bush administration's service and criss-crosses the world to "sell" the war. In the United States, he convinces a good many Democrats of the Iraqi threat. In his office at Washington's Brookings Institute, this reserved man explains why he was fooled. "You must understand that I was obsessed by the past. When I worked in the CIA, Saddam Hussein had tricked us several times. In 1990, we didn't see that Iraq was inches away from having the atomic bomb. In 1995, we thought he hadn't succeeded in developing biological weapons, and we were wrong: when his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected, we discovered the scope of his bacteriological program. So how was one to imagine that Saddam had stopped all that after the inspectors' departure in 1998? For me, it was inconceivable."
It was even more inconceivable for David Kay. This short and mustached former UN inspector has been a virulent pro-war proponent. Before the conflict, he stumped against those in favor of inspections. Two months after the fall of Baghdad, he continued to stomp around. He shouted it from every rooftop: the American army hadn't found anything because they hadn't looked well enough. The Bush administration took him at his word. He was thrust into the position of boss to the 130 American inspectors (Iraq Survey Group) sent into Iraq by the CIA in June 2003. Seven months later, however, the Napoleon of preventative war came back stammering, and he courageously confessed his defeat to Congress last January: "We have to admit it, we were all fooled - and myself first of all." Today he explains: "We were imprisoned in a certainty: Saddam had always lied and hidden his weapons, therefore he is still doing that; and we based all our evaluations on this hypothesis."
An example? The famous stocks of chemical and biological weapons. It was known that they existed before the 1991 Gulf War. The UN inspectors had destroyed several tons of them in the 1990s. The Iraqis swore that they had finished the job, the proof of those destructions, however, was inadequate. The American secret services - and Western secret services in general - concluded from this that the Iraqis were still lying as usual and that these weapons were hidden away somewhere. And they estimated these stocks to be the size of what they believed to be hidden.
However, this time the Iraqis were telling the truth. But they couldn't give all the details - and for good reason. "Here's what an Iraqi officer reported to me after the fall of Baghdad," David Kay relates. "During the Gulf War, a military truck that was carrying a large quantity of VX gas was at the front lines on the Kuwaiti border. At the moment of retreat, there was an ordinary traffic accident and the truck and all its cargo burned. Do you believe the company commander dared admit that to Saddam Hussein? Of course not. He was too scared. So we were still counting those particular tons in the presumed VX stocks."
David Kay gives another dramatic example. He says that Iraqi military got rid of very toxic agents several times near Baghdad without taking any precautions. That also could not be confessed to UN inspectors. In fact, fear, corruption, and chaos made a precise accounting impossible.
However, David Kay is now certain that Saddam Hussein made the strategic decision to destroy all stocks of biological and chemical agents. Why? "Because they weren't good for anything any more: he had no more missiles in condition to project them," explains David Kay. "And then, he wanted to get sanctions lifted and he knew that for that to happen, he'd have to accept a final round of inspections. It was highly probable that the UN inspectors would find all or part of those stocks. Consequently, he had to get rid of them. With the idea, of course, that he'd start all over again after the end of the embargo."
No Western intelligence service wanted to see this new strategy of Saddam Hussein. The CIA even believed that the dictator was not content just to hide his old stocks of anthrax and VX: he was producing new agents. There again, their judgments were based on fallacious reasoning. A present UN weapons inspector, who does not wish to be identified, explains: "Iraq would buy something that could be used to make either shampoo or sarin gas, for example. Well, then, the American secret services automatically accounted for the quantities of sarin that could be produced with this precursor in their estimates of new sarin stock. While, in fact, that product was used only to make shampoo...There are dozens of examples like that." Certain vaccines or antibiotics that could also be used as elements for the production of biological weapons were treated the same way. Or fuses that could be used in an atomic bomb or a dialysis machine... It must be said that the Iraqis acted suspiciously. "These purchases of problematic material were often made through front companies, or smuggled," the inspector continues. "So the secret services thought that they were probably intended for illicit activities. In fact, all of Iraq bought and sold the same way, on the black market. Because many people in Baghdad and the neighboring capitals profited from the commissions associated with this trafficking." The American spies, however, did not take that into account, since, as David Kay said, they rejected "all the evidence that didn't match their pre-established model."
One affair perfectly illustrates this blindness. In June 2001, a suspicious freighter arrived at the port of Aqaba in Jordan. The freighter came from Hong Kong and carried 3,000 aluminum tubes. A Jordanian firm - a front company had ordered it: the true destination was Iraq-, the CIA knew it. American agents seize the cargo. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Joe T. exults. This analyst has been following the affair for several weeks. He is sure that the tubes must be used for the manufacture of centrifuges, machines to enrich uranium. They are proof that Saddam Hussein will soon have a nuclear weapon. Outside of the CIA, however, nobody shares Joe T.'s opinion.
Particularly not Professor Houston Wood. He is the top American expert in centrifuges. He examines these tubes at Oak Ridge Atomic Center and gives his assessment. He remembers: "They were too thick. There was no way I could see how they could be used for centrifuges." His colleagues in the energy department advanced another explanation. These tubes were for rocket manufacture. The Iraqis were trying to copy one of the Italian Medusa company's models. They have proof: photos taken from spy satellites over Iraq. The satellite photos show tubes identical to the ones seized in Jordan, inscribed "Medusa, 81 mm rockets". However Joe T. doesn't want to let it go, and he succeeds in convincing CIA boss, George Tenet. His version becomes the agency's position and that of the Bush administration.
In fact, the White House provokes the American secret services' blindness. It exerts permanent pressure on them. It wants intelligence that justifies the invasion it has already planned. It is within this framework that Vice President Cheney, the head of the war party, makes several visits to Langley during spring 2002. He demands to meet the Iraq experts. He pushes them around. Look harder, find more proof, he says to them in effect. In the past, you've always underestimated Saddam, don't start doing that again. In short, he behaved as no other Vice President ever dared to do in the past, but he's been anointed by George Bush, who asks him to take the CIA in hand. The agency executes, gritting its teeth. "During this whole time," Kenneth Pollack explains, "I got a lot of indignant phone calls from friends inside the agency who couldn't stand the constant intimidation any more."
Out of obstinacy and under pressure, the CIA consequently constructs a virtual Iraq: a fictitious country conceived in Langley by a handful of analysts. To complete the picture, the agency will not refer to its agents on the ground: it has none or very few in Iraq, but to defectors who will brainwash with disconcerting ease.
At the heart of this disinformation machinery is a 56 year old Shi'ite banker, Ahmed Chalabi. He presides over the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the principal diaspora organization. He knows America and its secret services intimately. He grew up in Chicago where his family came as refugees in 1958 after the overthrow of the monarchy in Baghdad. In the United States, the Chalabis continued to live the high life. They are used to money and honors: Ahmed's father was President of the Senate. The son is brilliant: he takes a doctorate in mathematics at MIT. He's not made for research, however; he's an ambitious man in search of a career. First he tries finance. He starts a bank in Jordan that goes bankrupt in 1989 - a fraudulent bankruptcy. Having taken refuge in London, Ahmed Chalabi turns to politics. He has big ideas: he'll be Saddam Hussein's successor or bust.
After the Gulf War, the CIA becomes infatuated with this young Iraqi Anglophone with the mind-boggling manner. The CIA makes him its protégé. It bets millions of dollars on him. In 1992, it completely sets up the Iraqi National Congress and puts Ahmed Chalabi at its head. The family scion is now a creature of the American agency. He has a secret mission: to mount an espionage network in Iraq and organize defector flight. As often happens, however, the creature turns against its master. The manipulated becomes the manipulator. He's going to brainwash Langley.
How? The idea probably came to him the night of January 27, 1998. That day he welcomed a UN inspector to his home in London. It was Scott Ritter. Ritter was looking for the INC head's assistance. In Iraq, he said, the UN experts were at an impasse: they weren't finding anything any more, even though they were sure that Saddam was still hiding things from them. Could Chalabi gear up his clandestine organization to help them find the forbidden arsenal? Of course, the jovial Chalabi answered, all ears.
With big glasses and a square face, Scott Ritter tells what happened next: "So he'd understand, I gave him many details. I explained precisely what we were looking for. In particular, I told him that we suspected the Iraqis of having perfected mobile laboratories for the manufacture of biological weapons." And the naive Ritter doesn't stop there: he describes to the attentive Chalabi what such laboratories look like. The "creature" now knows how to appease and then manipulate the CIA. It only remains to make a suitably "briefed" defector appear.
Appear where? Why not in Germany? A few months later, a thirty-something year old Iraqi presents himself to the Berlin authorities. He's an engineer who has just fled Saddam Hussein's regime. He says he wants to spill the beans. He has learned his lesson well. The story he tells the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Bnd), the German secret service, goes something like this: "In Baghdad, I was a particularly brilliant student. Consequently, when I left the university, I was contacted by the regime bigwigs, Saddam's familiars. They asked me to lead a top secret program. What for? You'll never believe it: the implementation of mobile laboratories. To make what? Biological weapons."
The Iraqi is an excellent actor. He's also very well documented. His story has been polished up, down to the slightest details. He begins to minutely describe his workplace and the layout of the offices. He tells who does what. He gives the names of a dozen colleagues -"including the assistant in charge of renting cars...", the "Los Angeles Times" will later report. Then the conjuror defector goes into the heart of his subject. He explains that the labs are mounted on trucks and that he had them built three years before his departure. Then he draws out of his hat a sort of magic proof: a few very detailed drawings of the laboratories with the lay-out of compressors, pumps, incubators. As if by chance, they looks strangely like Inspector Ritter's explanations in London.
The trick worked. After a few months of questioning, the Bnd considers the young Iraqi's story "credible" and transmits the information to the CIA. The Germans, however, do not reveal the source's identity. The Americans give the mysterious defector a code name: "Curveball". They've gone for the bait. Now the only thing left is to reel in the line: convince the CIA that Curveball is telling the truth. Consequently, in 2001 and 2002, Ahmed Chalabi introduces two other "dissidents" to the American spies and both assert that they have seen mobile laboratories in Iraq. One even details that he'd been able to count seven or eight. The CIA's final doubts disappear. The agency is caught in the net. It will drag Colin Powell in with it.
On February 5, 2003, the Secretary of State works hard in front of the world's cameras at the UN. He puts all his authority and prestige into demonstrating the Iraqi threat. The mobile laboratories affair is the keystone to his presentation. These labs, he asserts, can "produce enough anthrax in a single month to kill thousands and thousands of people." He presents a "very detailed drawing of the way the trucks are configured" - the drawing Curveball entirely invented - as proof.
The CIA won't understand the manipulation until six months later, after the war. In the summer of 2003, Berlin finally releases its defector's identity to Washington. David Kay is going to lead the search in Iraq. He questions the "brilliant student's" family in Baghdad; he questions his brothers; he searches his university records, noses around at his workplace.... and, alarmed, he discovers the real Curveball. The little genius was not the first in his class, but the last. The dynamic young engineer had been fired from his office. The honest defector had not fled Iraq for political reasons: he was wanted for theft. Finally, the bitter cherry on the cake: Curveball is the brother of someone close to Ahmed Chalabi, the big manipulator. Hats off to the artist!
The Iraqi National Congress president had pulled off his most brilliant brainwashing operation with that one. There were others. In fact, CIA analyses of Iraq were riddled with the wild imaginings of suppositious defectors. To the point where one has to wonder how Chalabi could have been so effective. How did he know the missing pieces of the puzzle every time? In plain words, was the manipulator himself being used? If yes, by whom? The eternal question in espionage matters.
All one can do is highlight troubling connections. Chalabi has several friends strategically placed at the Pentagon and the White House, men who have militated with him for years in favor of a US overthrow of Saddam. Men who found him financing: Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's number three, Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief-of-Staff… powerful men who had access to all State secrets.
Did the war clan "fabricate" Chalabi, his network, and his proofs in order to win the decision and suffocate any hesitations the planned Iraq invasion aroused, particularly at the State Department? In short, did Ahmed Chalabi bamboozle the American administration or was he a simple cog in the Bush propaganda machine? Ongoing Congressional inquiries are trying to clarify this question. If the answer is yes, the scandal, Chalabi-gate, will be huge.
Whatever the case, for the Bush clan, anything went to "justify", then to "sell" the war. After the summer of 2002, the White House put a formidable machine into operation to supply disinformation to the general public and Congress. It drew from the CIA's cooker to feed its sales pitch. It chose the intelligence that fit its propaganda. It amplified and distorted it. And whenever the needed intelligence was lacking, it invented another.
Greg Thielmann saw this manipulation of the State at work from the inside. In 2002, this dashing and athletic man was the principal Iraqi threat State Department analyst. In this capacity, he had access to top secret documents on the subject. He therefore knows all about it - to the point that the television channel CBS entitled a portrait of him it recently broadcast ""The Man Who Knew." In an Arlington restaurant close to Washington, he tells the story: "From August 2002 on, Bush, Cheney and the others began to lie to America. First they scared them with the tons of anthrax and toxic gas Iraq was supposed to release, without ever saying that they were talking about theoretical estimates that were not based on any fact."
"Then they waved another red flag, the ultimate peril: the atomic bomb," Greg Thielmann adds. "They asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear teams. They lied. Thanks to our bugs, we knew that the atomic engineers didn't work together any more, that they had been transferred to other duties. We told the highest American authorities that, but that didn't fit in with their propaganda, so they acted as though that intelligence didn't exist."
"The same thing was true in the matter of the aluminum tubes. Outside of the CIA, no one believed it - no specialist, no allied intelligence service, not even the British MI6. I wrote a memo to Colin Powell on this subject. However, the White House never stopped repeating that the majority of experts shared the CIA's opinion! And then, right before the war, the tubes returned in all the speeches. It's alarming."
Then there was the phantasmagoric affair of the Niger uranium. "They used this re-treaded charade to make people believe in the nuclear threat," says Greg Thielmann. "At the end of 2001, the Italian secret services sent us a memo according to which Iraq would perhaps have tried to buy uranium from Niger. The information was vague and undocumented." In February 2002, Greg Thielmann lets Colin Powell know this affair seems hare-brained to him, but the White House doesn't want to know anything about it. On Vice President Cheney's order, the CIA sends a former diplomat and Africa specialist, Joseph Wilson, to Niger. He inquires and finds nothing. He reports that to Langley in March 2002.
The White House, however, would not drop the matter. The marketing men needed it. So then, miraculously, documents attesting to a negotiation between Iraq and Niger appear in Italy in October 2002. An anonymous source hands them over to Elisabetta Burba, a journalist from the weekly "Panorama". The reporter is wary and conducts her own inquiry in Niger. She doesn't find anything there and therefore decides not to publish anything. Her boss, however, is a friend of Berlusconi. Something tells him these strange documents will please Washington. He asks the journalist to hand them over to the American embassy in Rome. Bingo! The matter is re-launched in Washington. Once again, who is manipulating whom? A mystery.
However that may be, George Bush accuses Iraq of trying to import uranium from Africa, obviously to make an atomic bomb, on the basis of these 40 pages. The documents are fraudulent, but what does the White House care about that? Everything is good to convince public opinion and Congress.
Henry Waxman, Democratic Representative from California, voted for the war in Iraq. He hasn't calmed down ever since. In his office at the House of Representatives, this little man, a double for Gandhi, explains: "I believed their patter about a nuclear threat. And it was all a lie! They brainwashed Congress; that's unacceptable." To denounce the outrage, Henry Waxman published a devastating report last March: a list of 237 mendacious declarations made publicly by George Bush, Dick Cheney and the others on Saddam Hussein's suppositious arsenal. Yes, 237, 55 of which were uttered by the President of the United States himself.
Other voices, daily more numerous, denounce the manipulation of the State. Ray McGovern is a former CIA high official. Even he is furious: "There's no word to describe what George Bush has done to America and the world," he says. "To attack a country on the basis of false, truncated, or made up intelligence! Will he pay some day?"
Heads have begun to fall. George Tenet, the CIA head, resigned June 3. Ahmed Chalabi has been dismissed from power in Iraq. The Americans are even accusing him of having betrayed them for Iran. So far, however, no American political official has been punished. Next November?
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
Informant: Laurel
Starmail - 30. Jun, 18:48
Now the corporate neo- conservatives that are doing their best to destroy what little remains of democracy in America are running a campaign to label environmentalists as eco-terrorists. Under their Orwellian Newspeak definition anyone who threatens corporate profits by trying to protect the environment is a terrorist against the economy. Perhaps a new Orwellian Dictionary term could be coined for these new terrorists = treeorists.
Message from Don Maisch (excerpt)
"Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality."
Ron Arnold
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/063004G.shtml
Terrorist Tree Huggers
Bill Berkowitz
Tom Paine
Friday 25 June 2004
One of environmentalism's biggest foes - Ron Arnold - is back, peddling the idea that environmentalism breeds terrorism. Arnold is the same man who once bragged to The New York Times that, "No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along." He's been so successful, says one environmentalist, that he's now "within striking distance" of checking off every item on his "wise-use" agenda.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime political observer and columnist.
Ron Arnold - the father of America's "wise use" movement - is back. And this time he's adding accusations of terrorism to his arsenal. Consider the following:
On June 8, the FBI distributed its weekly intelligence bulletin to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, warning that eco-terrorists were planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could involve violent actions in a number of U.S. cities.
At the recent BIO 2004 annual conference in San Francisco, Phil Celestini, supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI domestic terrorism operations unit, told attendees that they could be targets of attacks by eco-extremists despite the fact that "they don't conduct animal testing at their own facilities," the San Francisco Business Times reported.
And in early June, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., introduced the "Ecoterrorism Act of 2004" which intends to 'protect and promote public safety and interstate commerce."
All of these stories have Ron Arnold's fingerprints on them. With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.
"Fifteen years after creating his 25 Point Wise-Use Agenda, an agenda prescribing unrestrained, unregulated and unconscionable abuse of the American commons, Ron Arnold is within striking distance of checking off every agenda items on his list," Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, told me in a recent interview.
Arnold is no novice when it comes to leveling charges that environmentalists are eco-terrorists. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber point out in their new book Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004) that Arnold "has been tossing around the term eco-terrorism for years, defining it as 'any crime committed in the name of saving nature,' which 'includes but it not limited to crimes officially designated as 'terrorism' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' This definition’ "is so broad," Rampton and Stauber write, "that is even includes activities such as sit-ins and other forms of peaceful civil disobedience."
Since 9/11, Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has been energetically and enthusiastically revving up his anti-environmental gospel with a new twist to his message: Environmental activists not only are working to stifle America's economic growth, but they are a breeding ground for terrorism in the homeland.
The Bush administration's cutbacks in the enforcement of environmental regulations, coupled with its focus on the war against terrorism, have planted the seeds for Ron Arnold's makeover as an expert on ecoterrorism. "It comes as no surprise that in today's Orwellian world where perception has become reality, Arnold has been recast as the fearless protector of corporate interests while mainstream environmentalists are being portrayed as terrorists," Silver says.
Silver pointed out that Arnold's anti-environmental agenda is salted by his public relations expertise and the understanding that, as Arnold told Outside magazine in 1991, "Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality." The same year Arnold also told The New York Times : "We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."
These days, Arnold maintains that a phalanx of liberal foundations is not only funding anti-growth and anti-labor environmental campaigns, but that the environmental movement has become fertile ground for budding ecoterrorists. While none of this is particularly new - he's been plowing similar ground for more than two decades - it resonates with the industry groups that support his work, as law enforcement officials struggling to keep on top of President Bush's permanent war against terrorism, and has helped him snare a consulting contract supported by government funds.
In the May 2004 issue of Playboy, Arnold told Dean Kuipers that: "There is a criminal section of the environmental movement, and it's probably getting money from the above-ground sector. Some of the environmental movement is simply anti corporate; some of it is more ideological." And in the May issue of Foundation Watch, a publication of the Washington, D.C.-based right-wing think tank Capital Research Center, Arnold's profile of the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts - a leading donor to environmental groups - concludes that Pew, which recently changed its legal status from "private foundation to public charity," is now be in a position to play "an even more active role in advocating sweeping policies to combat the alleged global warming threat."
A month earlier, in the same publication, Arnold took a close look at Teresa Heinz Kerry, the head of the Heinz Foundation and the wife of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Among other issues, Arnold looked at the "relationship between the foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the senator's presidential campaign" and what [that] might mean for a Kerry presidency."
Twelve years ago, Audubon magazine's Kate Callaghan pointed out that during the 20th century's first decade, Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, likely used the term, "wise use" when he "called conservation 'the wise use of resources.'" Eighty years later, Ron Arnold expropriated the phrase and turned it into a political movement. Using the term during a multiple use strategy conference in Reno, Nev., Arnold suggested that "wholesale mining, logging and grazing are possible while simultaneously preserving the land."
Arnold's 1989 book, The Wise Use Agenda , brought the "wise use" movement to the center of an anti-environmental, pro-industry nexus. A savvy corporate fundraiser and public relations spinmeister, he once proudly proclaimed himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution."
Arnold's resume also includes his job as the executive vice president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a pro-corporate group founded in 1976 by his longtime comrade, Alan Gottlieb. (Gottlieb is also credited with founding the anti-gun control Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy's Disinfopedia, CDFE claims to be "a non-partisan education and research organization which works on free enterprise studies, public policy research, book publishing, conferences, white papers and media outreach." CDFE's website asserts that it tracks "threats to free markets, property rights and limited government."
Over the years, CDFE, a tax-exempt educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code, has received support from a network of corporations, including Georgia Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, MacMillan Bloedel, Pacific Lumber, Exxon, DuPont and Boise Cascade.
In 2002, Arnold launched a campaign to convince the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program to take a close look at the Green Anarchy Tour 2002. He told the Conservative News Service (CNS) that the tour "presents probable cause for investigation. You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of."
In November 2003, according to the organization's website, Arnold, the author of EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber - which traces the history of the radical environmental movement and attempts to link Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to mainstream environmentalists - was "retained as expert consultant on ecoterrorism" for a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center study funded by a $343,885 grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
Arnold will work with Brent Smith, a professor of sociology and director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas, who is working on a project called "Pre-incident indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Identification of Behavioral, Geographic and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct," an effort aimed at predicting future terrorist attacks.
His warnings may be paying off. In early June, Pork Alert, an online publication of Pork magazine, reported that Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., had introduced the Ecoterrorism Act of 2004. Nethercutt's legislation would "establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with plant or animal enterprises. This bill would serve to protect livestock from tampering by ecoterrorists." The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.
"From drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to clear-cutting the Tongass National Forest, from opening all public lands to mining and energy production, to gutting the Wilderness Act, from amending and weakening the Endangered Species Act to turning America's national parks over to the Walt Disney Company, Ron Arnold's agenda is on a roll," Scott Silver pointed out. "All that stands in the way of Arnold and his ideologically extreme brethren are decades-worth of environmental laws and those who are dedicated to defending our public lands."
Starmail - 30. Jun, 17:35
Hessischer Landesverband mobilfunksenderfreie Wohngebiete e.V., Birkenweg 10, 63584 Gründau
27.Juni 2004
Presseinformation
Der Hessische Landesverband mobilfunksenderfreie Wohngebiete e.V., eine Vereinigung von mehr als 120 mobilfunkkritischen Bürgerinitiativen aus Hessen und den angrenzenden Gebieten aus Bayern und Rheinland-Pfalz hat die in Hessen von der Interessenvertretung der Mobilfunkbetreiber (IZMF) ausgeführte Messkampagne kritisch beobachtet. Wie nicht anders zu erwarten war, lagen die gemessenen Werte in der Regel (nach Aussage der Messenden, zum Teil weit) unter den Grenzwerten der 26. Bundes-Immisionsschutz-Verordnung.
Als Abschluss dieser Aktion werden von der IZMF nunmehr hessenweit (in Gießen am 1. Juli 2004, in Kassel am 8. Juli 2004, und in Darmstadt am 15. Juli 2004) drei inhaltsgleiche Informationsveranstaltungen angeboten, in denen der betroffenen Bevölkerung nachhaltig näher gebracht werden soll, dass die von Mobilfunkbasisstationen ausgehende elektromagnetische Strahlung ohne Einfluss auf die menschliche Gesundheit sei.
Der dieser Aussage zugrunde gelegte Vergleich zwischen dem verordneten Grenzwert und den vor Ort vorgefundenen Messwerten verbietet sich aus mehreren Gründen und ist schlichtweg als Versuch der Verdummung der betroffenen Bevölkerung zu sehen.
Mit dem teilweise großem Abstand der Messergebnisse zum Grenzwert zu argumentieren, ist sinn- und verantwortungslos, da Messwerte grundsätzlich unterhalb von Grenzwerten liegen müssen (Was von der Regulierungsbehörde ohnehin regelmäßig überwacht werden soll).
Es ist wissenschaftlich zweifelsfrei begründet und anerkannt, dass der geltende Grenzwert den menschlichen Körper vor thermischen Effekten schützen soll, nicht aber vor biologischen Beeinflussungen des menschlichen Gewebes schützen kann.
Weltweit gibt es eine Vielzahl seriöser konsistenter Belege für die mögliche Schädigung des biologischen Systems bei Menschen und Tieren durch den Betrieb von Mobilfunksystemen, die weit unterhalb des Niveaus bisheriger Messergebnisse in der Nähe von Mobilfunk-Basisstationen aufgetreten sind.
Die Behauptung der Mobilfunkbetreiber, die Besorgnis der Bevölkerung beruhe auf "mangelndem Wissen über die Technik" und "trotz sehr umfangreicher Studien könne kein Institut Gesundheitsschäden unterhalb des Strahlengrenzwertes feststellen", ist schlichtweg der Versuch, dem mündigen Bürger die Beurteilungsfähigkeit der Zusammenhänge abzusprechen und ihm jegliche Vorsorge zu verweigern.
HESSISCHER LANDESVERBAND MOBILFUNKSENDERFREIE WOHNGEBIETE e.V.
Für den Vorstand
Prof. inv. Dr. med. H.-J. Wilhelm Dr. E.W. Braun
Abtlg. Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Alfred Tittmann, 63486 Bruchköbel, Kettelerstr. 3,
Tel. 06181 – 7 73 76
http://www.main-rheiner.de/foren/forum_art.php3?id=4236471
KOMMENTAR
Grenzwerte
VON MICHAEL GRABENSTRÖER
Wenn eine Lobby-Organisation wie das "Informationszentrum Mobilfunk" freiwillig eine Messreihe in Auftrag gibt, dafür objektivierend den TÜV einspannt und mit den Ergebnissen in die Öffentlichkeit drängt, dann ist in der Regel ein gutes Ergebnis zu erwarten. Denn Mobilfunkbetreiber sind zu Messungen nicht verpflichtet.
Aber ihre PR-Strategen haben wohl erkannt, dass sie aus der Ecke herauskommen müssen, in der Handys und Sendemasten das Stigma gesundheitsgefährdender Strahlung anhaftet. Zudem konnte man sich durch hohe Grenzwerte immer auf der sicheren Seite wähnen. Also frisch gemessen! Stets deutlich unter den Grenzwerten! Durchaus anerkennenswert!
Nun hat CDU-Umweltstaatssekretär Karl-Winfried Seif die Mobilfunk-Messer trotz guter Werte aufgeschreckt. Wenn die Messwerte so fern jeder Abstrahlungs-Realität sind, könnten die Grenzwerte gesenkt werden. Recht hat er. Bei solchen Ergebnissen bleibt der laienhafte Schluss, dass die Grenzwerte unwirklich hoch sind. Seif will sie senken und zieht damit die politisch richtigen Folgerungen aus den Messergebnissen. Seif kommt damit zugleich den Bedenken der Mobilfunkgegner entgegen.
Abwarten, was aus der Forderung wird. Inzwischen könnten die Handy-Lobbyisten eine weitere Langzeit-Messreihe auflegen, um die gesundheitliche Entwicklung der Menschen festzuhalten, die an Stellen mit besonders auffallenden Messergebnissen bei Abstrahlungen von Handy-Sendemasten leben. Vertrauen kann man schließlich nie genug erwerben!
[ document info ]
Copyright © Frankfurter Rundschau online 2004
Dokument erstellt am 30.06.2004 um 00:10:20 Uhr
Erscheinungsdatum 30.06.2004 | Ausgabe: S | Seite: 44
Grenzwerte und Mobilfunk
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/242821/
Measure people, not masts
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/561516/Starmail - 30. Jun, 17:02
DNA- Veränderungen sind Grundlage des Krebsgeschehens! Gehäufte Krebsfälle um die Sendeanlagen, auch hier in Thüringen, deren ungewöhnliche Verläufe, aktuelle wissenschaftliche Hinweise, machen Vorsorge laut dem EG Recht unabdingbar und sofort nötig!
In Westhausen werden die Kindergartenkinder direkt aus unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft seit März 2002 durch eine Richtantenne voll bestrahlt, und unter den Anwohnern sind bereits mehrere letal verlaufene Krebsfälle aufgetreten.
Dabei hat sich auch die Bundesrepublik im Rahmen der EG verpflichtet, verantwortlich Vorsorge für ihre Bürger zu betreiben, und dies auf hohem Schutzniveau:
Ausschnitte aus „Die Anwendbarkeit des Vorsorgeprinzips“ (KOM(2000) 1 – C5-0143/2000 – 2000/2086(COS)):
.....wonach das Vorsorgeprinzip in all den Fällen anwendbar ist, in denen wissenschaftliche Beweise nicht ausreichen, keine eindeutigen Schlüsse zulassen oder unklar sind, begründeter Anlass zur Besorgnis über die Möglichkeit besteht, dass potenziell schädliche Folgen für die Umwelt und die Gesundheit von Menschen, Tieren und Pflanzen eintreten, die mit dem gewählten Schutzniveau unvereinbar sind;
.....stellt fest, dass ein begründeter Anfangsverdacht oder Erfahrungswerte ebenfalls zur Anwendung des Vorsorgeprinzips führen müssen;
...wünscht, dass die Kommission bereits während der laufenden Reflexionsphase mit Arbeiten zu den Auswirkungen der Anwendung des Vorsorgeprinzips auf das Haftpflichtrecht beginnt;
...ist der Auffassung, dass es, wenn das Vorsorgeprinzip effizient und glaubwürdig angewandt werden soll, wichtig ist, alle Hauptbeteiligten, gegebenenfalls auch Vertreter der Bürgergesellschaft, in die politischen Entscheidungen, die im Rahmen der Anwendung des Prinzips getroffen werden, einzubeziehen; fordert die Kommission auf, sich bei der WTO und beim Europäischen Gerichtshof dafür einzusetzen, dass bei der Beilegung von Streitigkeiten, die auch das Vorsorgeprinzip betreffen, alle Hauptbeteiligten das Recht erhalten sollten, entweder schriftlich oder persönlich relevante Informationen beizusteuern und rechtzeitig Informationen zu erhalten;
.... der Schutz der menschlichen Gesundheit und der Umwelt muss Vorrang vor jeder anderen Erwägung haben, .... fordert nachdrücklich, dass die Beteiligten in einem möglichst frühen Stadium Vorschläge zur Ablösung der als gefährlich geltenden Produkte unterbreiten.
... es gibt keine Mindestrisikoschwelle, unterhalb deren das Vorsorgeprinzip nicht berücksichtigt werden muss, und daher kann es selbst bei geringem Risiko herangezogen werden,
.... der Beweis eines Kausalzusammenhangs zwischen dem Umstand oder dem Produkt, von dem ein potentielles Risiko ausgeht, und den befürchteten Auswirkungen muss nicht erbracht werden,.....
... vertritt die Auffassung, dass der Grundsatz der Verbraucherinformation und der Wahlfreiheit gewahrt werden sollte und dass, wo immer möglich, die Verbraucher selbst die Möglichkeit haben sollten, aufgrund ausreichender Informationen eine Entscheidung über die Risiken der Produkte, die sie erwerben, zu treffen;.....
Wie lange soll nach einseitig die Kommunikationsanbieter auf Kosten der Nutzer und Anwohner der Sendeanlagen vor den Konsequenzen ihrer Technologie beschützt werden, und ihre Rechte weiter ausgebaut werden?
Wie können kleine Sendeanlagen völlig (Bau-) genehmigungsfrei errichtet werden, wenn auch diese, die Gesundheit der Anwohner beeinträchtigen können, und die Unversehrtheit der eigenen vier Wände und des Körpers nicht mehr gegeben ist?
Wie lange wollen wir die Kinder noch diese möglichen, drastischen Gefahr während ihrer körperlichen Entwicklung aussetzen, in der der Körper weitaus empfindlicher ist?
Wie lange wollen wir uns noch taktische Argumente anhören, die im Endeffekt darauf hinauslaufen, dass unsere Wissenschaftler bisher mit ihrer Forschung die Sache nicht exakt klären können, somit keinen kausalen Schädigungsbeweis führen können und somit die potentielle Schädigung ohne Einschränkungen ausgebaut, sogar noch verstärkt werden darf / kann?
Es geht anders, es gibt Alternativen für mobile Kommunikation auch mit GSM Geräten!
aGSM trennt und verbindet....
mehr zu aGSM unter Stoppschild.de
mit den besten Wünschen an alle Handynutzer... bleibt gesund!
Bernd Schreiner
Freier Architekt, Dipl.-Ing.(FH), Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, +Landesverband Thüringen+
Bürger gegen Elektrosmog,
http://www.buerger-gegen-esmog.de ,
mail@landesverband-thueringen.de
036875 fon 69873 fax 69874, 98663 Westhausen/Thüringen
Dies ist ein Kommentar zu:
Neuer Zündstoff für Diskussion über Handy-Gefahr
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/253511/Starmail - 30. Jun, 11:15
Ärzte Zeitung, 29.06.2004
Elektromagnetische Wellen mit Handy-Intensität verursachten DNA-Veränderungen / Daten einer in-vitro-Studie
MÜNCHEN (wst). Inwieweit die von Handys ausgehenden elektromagnetischen Felder gesundheitliche Risiken bergen, wird immer wieder kontrovers diskutiert. Vorläufige Ergebnisse einer von der Europäischen Union geförderten verblindeten in-vitro-Studie belegen nun DNS-Veränderungen.
Am REFLEX-Projekt von Februar 2000 bis August 2003 haben zwölf überwiegend universitäre Forschergruppen aus sieben europäischen Ländern teilgenommen. Ziel war, den potentiellen Einfluß von elektromagnetischen Feldern niedriger Energie auf biologische Systeme mit in-vitro-Modellen zu ergründen.
Koordiniert hat das Projekt die Münchner VERUM-Stiftung für Verhalten und Umwelt. Der Internist Professor Franz Adlkofer, wissenschaftlicher Direktor der Stiftung, hat einige Mobilfunk-relevante Ergebnisse auf einer von den Grünen initiierten Anhörung im Bayerischen Landtag in München vorgestellt.
Wie Adlkofer berichtete, haben die Forscher im REFLEX-Projekt Kulturen menschlicher und tierischer Zellen, etwa Promyelozyten und Fibroblasten, elektromagnetischen Feldern ausgesetzt. Sie entsprachen in ihrer Stärke denen, die bei einem Handytelefonat auf den Kopf einwirken.
Dabei gelangten die Arbeitsgruppen trotz unterschiedlicher Nachweismethoden zum weitgehend gleichen Ergebnis: Je nach Expositionsdauer und Expositionsintensität kam es unterhalb des für Handys geltenden SAR (Spezifische Absorptionsrate)-Grenzwertes von zwei Watt pro Kilogramm zu einem signifikanten Anstieg von Einfach- und gefährlicheren - weil mit mehr Reparaturkomplikationen behafteten - Doppel-DNA-Strangbrüchen.
Wie die DNA-Strangbrüche entstehen, ist noch unklar. Es scheint aber, daß durch die elektromagnetische Strahlung vermehrt freie Radikale produziert werden, die dann offensichtlich eine Schlüsselrolle bei den Strangbrüchen haben. Denn in Zellkulturen, denen der Radikalenfänger Vitamin C zugesetzt worden war, gab es kaum Strangbrüche. Die Raten waren dann unter Exposition ähnlich niedrig wie in den unbestrahlten Kontrollzellkulturen, so Adlkofer.
Eine 24-stündige intermittierende Feldbelastung (steter Wechsel von fünf Minuten an und zehn Minuten aus) löste offensichtlich mehr DNA-Schäden aus als eine gleich lange kontinuierliche Exposition.
Daß die DNA-Schäden zumindest unter in-vitro-Bedingungen von den bestrahlten Zellen nicht problemlos repariert werden können, belegen Chromosomenanalysen Wiener REFLEX-Forscher. Sie fanden einen signifikanten Anstieg von Chromosomenveränderungen wie Spalten, Brüchen, azentrischen und dizentrischen Chromosomen in den exponierten im Vergleich zu nicht exponierten Zellkulturen.
Adlkofer räumte ein, daß die in-vitro-Befunde nicht auf in-vivo-Verhältnisse übertragen werden können. Möglicherweise ist in komplexeren biologischen Systemen die Toleranz gegen elektromagnetische Felder oder die reparative Kompetenz gegen deren biologische Auswirkungen größer als in isolierten Zellkulturen.
STICHWORT
EU-gefördertes Forschungsprogramm REFLEX
REFLEX ist der Kurzname für das von der EU im 5. Rahmenprogramm geförderte Forschungsvorhaben "Risk Evaluation of Potential Environmental Hazard from Low Energy Electromagnetic Field Exposure Using Sensitiv in vitro Methods". Beteiligt sind die Universitäten Bologna, Bordeaux, Mailand, Wien, Zürich, Berlin und Hannover sowie fünf nichtuniversitäre Forschungszentren.
Um den Einfluß subjektiver Erwartungen der Untersucher auszuschließen, wurde für die Expositionsversuche von der Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule Zürich unter Leitung von Professor Niels Kuster ein spezielles System entwickelt: Ein Computer entschied nach dokumentiertem Zufallscode, welche von jeweils zwei mit identischen Zellkulturen bestückte Expositionskammern bestrahlt wurden und welche als Kontrolle dienten.
Der Wahlcode wurde den Forschern immer erst zugänglich gemacht, nachdem sie die molekularbiologischen Analysen abgeschlossen hatten. Ursprünglich sollte Brüssel den von Adlkofer geschriebenen Ergebnisbericht des REFLEX-Projektes noch im letzten Jahr veröffentlichen.
Eine industrienahe Forschergruppe wollte jedoch das Resümee des Projektkoordinators nicht mit tragen, weshalb Brüssel weiteren internen Diskussionsbedarf eingeräumt hat. Die komplette offizielle Veröffentlichung des Ergebnisberichtes wird nun voraussichtlich im Sommer diesen Jahres erfolgen.
http://www.aerztezeitung.de/docs/2004/06/29/119a0903.asp?cat=/politik
Copyright © 1997-2004 by Ärzte Zeitung
Siehe dazu Kommentar unter:
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/253517/Starmail - 30. Jun, 11:06
